The Federal Judiciary’s PACER is Outdated and Illegal Pricing Harms the Public

Aaron Greenspan: Most lawyers turn to outrageously priced, subscription information services such as LexisNexis, Westlaw, and Bloomberg Law to get their case information. Those services simply compile data from PACER and mark up the cost, which ultimately gets passed on to clients, who pay even more. In other words, most lawyers love PACER because it helps them make money—or they just don’t care either way. Meanwhile, the public is harmed as the cost of litigation soars, and key legal arguments are priced out of reach (especially for pro se plaintiffs who represent themselves).